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SpaceX tweaks Starship's Super Heavy rocket booster as design continues to evolve
CEO Elon Musk says that SpaceX continues to evolve the design of its next-generation Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket booster, a process of continuous improvement the company has successfully used for a decade.
Designed to place more than 100 metric tons (220,000 lb) of payload into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Starship would effectively double (and possibly triple) the expendable performance of SpaceX’s existing Falcon Heavy rocket. Critically, it would be able to dramatically outclass Falcon Heavy (and Falcon 9 even more so) in a fully reusable configuration, meaning that both the Starship upper stage and Super Heavy booster could be recovered and reused.
Since SpaceX first publicly revealed its next-generation launch vehicle and Mars ambitions in September 2016, the path to realizing the dream of a fully-reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle has been decidedly windy. After making the radical decision to move entirely from carbon composites to stainless steel in late 2018, the Starship design has remained relatively similar, coalescing around a specific concept that has matured to full-scale tank tests. Now, Musk says that Super Heavy’s design was tweaked slightly to make the booster even taller than before, while he later noted that Starship’s design also continues to “[evolve] rapidly.”
According to Musk, the Super Heavy booster will be stretched by a steel ring or two, reaching a new height of ~70m (230 ft). In other words, Starship’s first stage alone will measure as tall as the entirety of a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket – first stage, second stage, and payload fairing included. Powered by up to 37 Raptor engines, a Super Heavy booster could produce more than ~90,000 kN (19,600,000 lbf) of thrust at liftoff – an incredible 12 times as much thrust as SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.
Starship, meanwhile, will be a beast of an orbital-class upper stage on its own, measuring at least 50m (165 ft) tall and weighing some 1350 metric tons (3 million lb) fully-fueled. Stacked on top of Super Heavy, a Starship ‘stack’ would reach a staggering 120m (395 ft) and weigh more than 5000 metric tons (11 million lb) once loaded with liquid oxygen and methane propellant.
In simple terms, Starship/Super Heavy should be the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful launch vehicle ever assembled once it heads to the launch pad for the first time. While SpaceX is making great daily progress its ever-growing South Texas rocket factory, built up from next to nothing in a matter of months, it could still be quite some time before that milestone is within reach.
SpaceX’s process of continuously tweaking and improving the design and production of its rockets does typically have that effect. However, it’s more a symptom of the company’s approach to hardware and software development. Instead of working slowly and carefully from nothing to a preconceived finished product, SpaceX typically seeks to design, build, and test the minimum viable product, gradually improving (or entirely replacing) past ideas, designs, and hardware until overarching goals are fully achieved.
With Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, this meant beginning with Falcon 1, a dead-simple proof-of-concept rocket. After successfully reaching orbit, SpaceX expanded its Falcon 9 development program, itself focused initially on the minimum viable product – a full-scale expendable rocket. Since Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, the goal has always been to build a fully-reusable rocket – the company has simply chosen the far more sustainable and practical approach of tackling only a select few problems at a time.
The Starship and Falcon development programs aren’t directly comparable but it’s safe to say that Starship is currently still in the very early stages of hardware development. Shortly after revealing Super Heavy’s height growth, Musk noted that Starship’s design is also being tweaked.
Sketching out a rough series of upgrades that could feasibly be made to the reusable spacecraft’s currently design, Musk thinks that Starship’s conical tank domes (and thus Super Heavy’s, too) could be flattened. That might allow an extra ~3m (10 ft) of propellant tank space to be squeezed into the same 50m Starship length, improving performance by simply using the vehicle’s fixed volume more efficiently.
With a nascent factory quite literally churning out Starship hardware, these tweaks are a whole different animal. Thanks to data and insight gathered from testing actual full-scale Starship tanks, up to and including fully-assembled tank sections, SpaceX will be able to guide its continuous improvement with even greater precision, honing in on the next-generation rocket’s orbital launch debut.
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Tesla rival’s CEO makes shock suggestion to customers about Model Y
“The Model Y is a great car, and Tesla also announced a number of promotions yesterday, so you might want to consider it.”
Tesla rival Xiaomi is experiencing demand that is off-the-charts with its new YU7 crossover, which competes with the Model Y. The company’s CEO has stated that demand is truly outpacing what it can build, and that customers in limbo should consider the Model Y because “it’s a great car.”
The Xiaomi YU7 has already gained an incredible number of orders so far. Its launch a few months ago had consumers busting down doors to place an order before others, and demand has been so high that customers will wait, on average, between 56 and 59 weeks for delivery.
Within 18 hours, Xiaomi received about 240,000 orders, CarScoops reported. Some customers are truly interested in the vehicle, but cannot wait the extended period to take delivery as they might need a car now.
Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun said on social meida that there are other cars out there that would be suitable as a replacement to the YU7:
“If you need to buy a car quickly, other China-produced new energy vehicles are pretty good.”
He explicitly mentioned the Model Y, Xpeng G7, and Li Auto i8.
Regarding the Model Y, he said:
“The Model Y is a great car, and Tesla also announced a number of promotions yesterday, so you might want to consider it.”
The Model Y has been the best-selling car in the world over the past two years, and it still leads in many markets as the most sought-after EV. However, in China, there are so many formidable competitors that customers are seemingly going for whatever they can get to first.
Of course, a car is a car, but Tesla has gained a more notable reputation for its industry-leading tech and driver assistance systems, including City Autopilot, which has been used in China for a few months now.
Tesla China owners share first impressions of FSD-style “City Autopilot”
Tesla is offering a tasty Supercharging incentive on inventory Model 3 units in Canada as it continues to push sales in the third quarter.
In the United States, Tesla is preparing for the end of the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit. While it is offering a multitude of incentives in the U.S. to help push sales of its vehicles before the credit goes away, it is not saving the deals for Americans exclusively.
Yesterday, the company announced it is now offering Free Supercharging for life on all Model 3 inventory in Canada, a massive incentive for those who would use the vehicle as a daily driver:
Unlimited road trips through Canada
Free Supercharging now on all Model 3 inventory 🇨🇦
— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) August 15, 2025
The deal would normally only apply to Superchargers located in Canada, meaning if a Canadian drove over the border into the United States and Supercharged, they would have to pay for it.
However, Tesla also confirmed that the charging deal would extend to the U.S. Canadians will be able to drive across the U.S. and Supercharge for free for the life of the vehicle.
Free Supercharging is such a great perk because the money an owner saves on charging factors directly into what they are saving if they were to own a gas car. While Supercharging and home charging are, on average, cheaper than filling up with gas, the savings are not massive.
When Supercharging is free, it can save consumers hundreds of dollars per month, especially if they plan to use the Tesla for their daily commute. Some people could fill their gas cars up two times a week to get to work, spending $80-$100 every five days on gas.
Tesla has been using incentives like this to push vehicles into customers’ hands. Q3 could be one of the best three-month spans in recent memory with the push it is making.
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Tesla is preparing to take on autonomy’s final boss
India’s city streets are notorious for their complexity and congestion.
If there is any sign that Tesla is now confident about its self-driving program, it would be this. As could be seen on Tesla’s Careers page, the company is now hiring Autopilot Vehicle Operators in Delhi and Mumbai, India.
As far as real-world traffic is concerned, one could argue that India’s city streets are the final boss of autonomous driving systems due to their complexity and congestion.
Tesla job openings
As per Tesla in its recent job openings, Prototype Vehicle Operators will be responsible for driving an engineering vehicle for extended periods and conducting dynamic audio and camera data collection for testing and training purposes. In both its job listings for Mumbai and Delhi, Tesla noted that successful applicants will be gathering real-world data on the weekends and around the clock.
Considering the job openings in India, Tesla seems to be intent on rolling out its advanced driver-assist systems like FSD in the country. This is quite interesting, as Tesla is not hiring Prototype Vehicle Operators in other territories that recently launched, such as the Philippines. Perhaps Tesla intends to tackle FSD’s final boss of sorts before rolling out FSD in other territories.
FSD’s rollout
Tesla’s autonomous driving program uses the company’s Full Self-Driving system, which is currently available on vehicles in North America and China. Tesla, however, has a more advanced version of FSD called Unsupervised FSD, which is currently being used in vehicles that are part of the Robotaxi pilot in Austin and the Bay Area.
Elon Musk has also recently announced on X that Tesla will be releasing FSD V14 in the coming weeks. He also shared a number of improvements that can be expected from FSD V14. “The FSD release in about 6 weeks will be a dramatic gain with a 10X higher parameter count and many other improvements. It’s going through training & testing now. Once we confirm real-world safety of FSD 14, which we think will be amazing, the car will nag you much less,” Musk wrote in his post.
Tesla rival’s CEO makes shock suggestion to customers about Model Y
Tesla offers tasty Supercharging incentive as Q3 push continues
Tesla is preparing to take on autonomy’s final boss
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